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Innovation and commercialization are crucial for the competitiveness and economic well-being of countries. Despite the importance of innovation, recent studies have showed that Canada is lagging behind other countries in terms of its innovation and commercialization performance. The claim is often made that Canada performs well in generating the knowledge needed for innovation; however, the problem lies in transforming this knowledge into commercial success. Thus, a major preoccupation is how to turnaround this weak commercialization performance. Despite the wide range of programs, policies and regulations implemented by the Canadian Government along with its provincial counterparts to engender a turnaround, little has changed in Canada’s commercialization performance. Therefore, the search for solutions continues. Given that commercialization takes place at the firm-level, this study will explore the relationship between firm-size and commercialization. Several existing studies have examined the link between innovation and firm size, but few have examined the link between commercialization and firm size. Despite the arguments supporting medium-sized firms’ ability to commercialize innovations, there is a weak empirical base that explores the position of Canadian medium-sized firms and their innovation and commercialization capabilities. This study will contribute to the existing knowledge by covering the gap in the literature concerning the role of medium-sized firms in commercialization, compared to small and large firms. This study provides evidence suggesting that small and medium-sized firms should be considered differently.

Thesis (Master, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-27 21:48:20.594 / Wireless networks are less reliable than wired networks because channels are “exposed” to the surrounding environment that is susceptible to interference and noise. To minimize losses of data due to collisions, wireless networks need a mechanism to regulate the access on the transmission medium. Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols control access to the shared communication medium so that it can be used efficiently. In this thesis, we first describe the collision-controlled Dual Prohibition Multiple Access (DPMA) protocol [45]. The main mechanisms implemented in DPMA, such as binary dual prohibition, power control, interference control, and support for differentiated services (DiffServ), are presented in detail. We conducted a thorough simulation study on DPMA protocol from several aspects. First, we conduct simulations to observe the effects of binary competition number (BCN), unit slot length and safe margin on the performance of DPMA. Secondly, the DiffServ capability of DPMA is demonstrated through simulation results. Finally, we compare the DPMA protocol with the CSMA/CA protocol and find that DPMA with optimal configuration has better performance than CSMA/CA under both low and high network density. / Master

Innovation and commercialization are crucial for the competitiveness and economic well-being of countries. Despite the importance of innovation, recent studies have showed that Canada is lagging behind other countries in terms of its innovation and commercialization performance. The claim is often made that Canada performs well in generating the knowledge needed for innovation; however, the problem lies in transforming this knowledge into commercial success. Thus, a major preoccupation is how to turnaround this weak commercialization performance. Despite the wide range of programs, policies and regulations implemented by the Canadian Government along with its provincial counterparts to engender a turnaround, little has changed in Canada’s commercialization performance. Therefore, the search for solutions continues. Given that commercialization takes place at the firm-level, this study will explore the relationship between firm-size and commercialization. Several existing studies have examined the link between innovation and firm size, but few have examined the link between commercialization and firm size. Despite the arguments supporting medium-sized firms’ ability to commercialize innovations, there is a weak empirical base that explores the position of Canadian medium-sized firms and their innovation and commercialization capabilities. This study will contribute to the existing knowledge by covering the gap in the literature concerning the role of medium-sized firms in commercialization, compared to small and large firms. This study provides evidence suggesting that small and medium-sized firms should be considered differently.

The objective with this research was to investigate and understand the adoption of cloud computing and to find the process of adopting cloud services. The method used to collect data was interviews. To find both the users and the providers perspective two cases were investigated, one user case and one provider case. The results were divided into two parts, the first a number of categories that were found when comparing the user case to the provider case, the second a process that describes the adoption of cloud computing. The categories in the first part of the results are; decision process, definition of cloud computing, integration and security, adoption and future development. When analyzing the results we came to the conclusion that both users and providers are striving for simplicity, security and to move the responsibility away from the user. The adoption of cloud computing is not as complex as many organizations have thought and by moving the applications and hardware out of the organization the user can focus on its core strategies.

Abstract of the research: What does Dancing Have to Do with Blogging? A  Study of Verbal and Non-verbal Communication among Dance Bloggers Dance, in its essence can be seen as a form of social interaction. Unique role of dancing is the recurrent motif in dance-related theories which underline that dance should not be approached only from the perspective of physical exercise but also interpreted within its social context.  In other words, dance is a symbol of a changing society Dance is can be also seen as a non-verbal expression of emotions. These are projected from the inner subjective world of an individual onto the audience. Non-verbal communication through movement and gestures, as well as spatial arrangement of bodies predominates but the recent trends show the development of a ‘verbal’ dancing occurring online via specialized blogs and social networks. The growing popularity of dance blogs implies a great diversity within the communicative methods used by dancers. The traditional view of dance as a representative of non-verbal interaction will be challenged in this paper and hypothesis stating that the verbal and non-verbal communication are strictly interrelated will be suggested. Moreover, the paper will concentrate on the impact that online blogging communities have on socialization and identity formation among dancers. The research question revolves around the idea that dance blogging demonstrates the need to use verbal signs to complete the predominantly non-verbal communication. Furthermore, the reasons motivating bloggers to write about dance will be analyzed. This will be done in order to demonstrate how attitudes to dancing and communicating as well as dancers’ distinctive ways of socialization are reflected by their belongingness to the blogging community. The investigation attempts at identifying the mechanism behind online interactions among dancers and the ways in which the Internet influences socialization and formation of dancer’s identity. The theories used in study are rooted in both macro- and micro-sociology and their aim is to clarify concepts such as communication, meaning and identification within a group. The data will be collected through interviews conducted with dance bloggers and through the observations of thirty dance blogs. Content analysis of such data will, hopefully, demonstrate how significant blogging is for the online and offline communication processes.

The process of internationalization has been one of the major areas of interest for researchers for over four decades. The phase that precedes internationalization for firms, known as the pre-internationalization phase, has also been of interest to study. Firms that are in this early stage of becoming international, are characterized by being active only in the domestic market but with intentions to expand. However, within this phase, little is known about the stimuli that affect firms to expand their operations to foreign markets. By combining the traditional theories of the drivers and barriers to internationalize, with the new theories concerning the entrepreneurial influence in small and young firms, this study serves to complement a particular research gap in the pre-internationalization phase. The purpose of this study is to describe the pre-internationalization phase of SMEs, analyze how drivers, barriers and entrepreneurial characteristics of managers affect the decision to internationalize and to contribute to a further understanding of the research gap in the preinternationalization phase. A deductive research approach and a qualitative research method have been chosen for this study. In this way, in-depth answers can provide understanding to a phenomenon that is still partly undiscovered. To increase understanding in a broader environment than within one organization the multiple case study design is used for this study. Therefore, three managers from different firms participated in interviews, which is the basis for the empirical data. When the empirical data is combined with relevant theories it provides a basis for the analysis where the effects of drivers, barriers and international entrepreneurship are evaluated. This analysis provides a foundation for the conclusion that it is a necessity to combine traditional and new theories, with further empirical research, to fully understand why young domestic small and medium-sized enterprises decide to internationalize. When these are put together, it is possible to establish that barriers that are neglected by entrepreneurs are seemingly small impediments, in comparison to the drivers to reach success and the entrepreneurial urge to expand.

According to the 2010 Small and Medium Enterprise White Book published by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the proportion of the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Taiwan is 97.9%, which indicates that the SMEs is the foundation of Taiwan¡¦s economic development. However, the financing activity of the SMEs is limited owing to the lack of financing channels and the defects of finance, operation, and structure design. Hence, through the depth interviews, the paper investigates how the SMEs could make use of the internal and external resources to negotiate with the banks when applying for the credit line. The research indicates that the SMEs should recognize the useful resources from the producing and selling chains and provide them to the banks as the sub-gages. This would make it easier for the banks to control the repayment sources or secure their rights. On the other hand, the SMEs will acquire the appropriate credit line solutions, expand the business scale and reach the goal of sustainable management.

In this paper, we propose a novel information-theoretical fairness metric to evaluate the fairness of bandwidth allocation to distributed nodes in local area network. When the source traffic pattern is fixed, the proposed metric is a mapping from the set of all medium access control (MAC) protocols to the interval [0,1] in the real line such that a larger value corresponds to a MAC protocol that allocates bandwidth more fairly. The metric is applicable for a wide range of medium access control schemes including those in which the packet lengths are not identical and/or multipacket reception (MPR) capability is available. To verify the correctness of the novel metric, we use it to evaluate the fairness levels of an IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN composed of homogeneous or heterogeneous nodes. Our simulations indicate that for the IEEE 802.11 protocol, the short-term fairness level is low while the long-term fairness level is high. The information-theoretical fairness metric leads to a conclusion that is consistent to the previous finding in the lecture.

After entering WTO, Taiwan faces the challenges of globalization. At the same time, migration of manufacturing industries to mainland China seems to be an endless trend. To avoid failure, firms have to make constant changes, expand their sizes, and seek strategies for sustaining profit growth under the severe competitive environment of today¡¦s global markets. To maintain competitive advantages, small and medium enterprise have to leverage their resources and competences for sustainable profitability and growth by careful strategies formulation. The diversification processes to expand a firm¡¦s size and business fields are related to its competence and its efficiency of leveraging resources. This research is about the relationship between resources based view and diversifying strategies. Based on the diversification process of company L, we explore the strategies for the case company by considering changes in industry environment and the company¡¦s conditions ,with the evaluation of the company¡¦s competence and resources. The findings are: 1. The fields of new businesses for diversification of a company are restrained by their existing resources. 2.The diversification will be more likely to success, if the products to be carried in the new business are highly connected to the company¡¦s current customers. 3.The new business will eventually need new resources ,which will be accumulated and become one of the firm¡¦s important resources.